"many companies, government agencies, and educational institutions canchuck at least some of them. Those based on XP -- or Windows 2000,which still has a huge installed base in government agencies -- canlook to big savings on licensing, hardware, and training costs."

"Under the Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan the UK government will specify requirements by reference to open standards and require compliance with open standards in solutions where feasible.1 The government indicated it will support the use of ODF. It will also work to ensure that government information is available in open formats, and it will make this a required standard for government websites."

Seventeen national and eight provincial governments around the world have now officially endorsed ODF for document exchange.

Reduce costs, lower TCO, <1year ROI?

Here is the Liberate - Migrate - Virtualize recipe

Liberate:

- free up money in IT budget by taking alternate procurement strategy: http://www.ibm.com/software/info/liberate - more than 600 companies have freed up $3.5B over the last 3 years by executing this strategy